Priorities
by Feilyn
Summary: Everyone has their priorities. Speaking at yet another  Ministry do when he's left his speech at home isn't at the top of Harry's list. Yet here he is and as a result it all goes to hell.With TWO juicy news items, what does the Daily Prophet report? HPDM


Harry groaned, running an irritated hand back through his hair. He paused a moment, stared at the hand and swore. Loudly.

"I'm never going to lose that habit, am I?" he murmured at his reflection.

"And you're never going to tame that hair," came a familiar drawl from the bed.

"Just because I don't faint if a single strand of hair is out of place," Harry snorted.

The bed squeaked and a strong arm slid around Harry's waist, pulling him back against a lithe body. "If you ever only had one single hair out of place, I think I _would_ faint from the shock of it," a pair of lips breathed against his neck.

"Mmm," Harry agreed absently, tilting his head. "Wait, what?"

A low chuckle that thrummed down his spine and straight to his groin. "Do you ever listen to me?"

"Not when there are more important things to be concentrating on," Harry sighed, eyes sliding shut.

"Things such as the Ministry party?" The comment would almost have been innocent, if not for the wicked grin curving delicious lips. Green eyes met gray in the mirror, and Harry swore again.

"Bastard! You – god, you do this too often," he groused, twisting out of the hold and reaching for his comb.

"You like it, admit it. Plus, you can't tell me that you're so desperate to be at _another_ one of these events that you want to be early – here, give the comb to me. You're hopeless."

"Any excuse to get your hands on me, hmm?"

"I don't need an excuse," said the delicious lips as their owner pulled the comb through Harry's hair and slipped a hand under his shirt.

"Alright, I'll give you that."

"I'm sure." Silence, and Harry leaned back into the soft caress of fingers as the comb was abandoned. "That's about as good as it's going to get, I'm afraid. I'm off."

"Already?"

"Party opens in five minutes. You may get to be fashionably late but I fear a simple peasant must be on time."

Harry laughed. "You'd never make it as a member of the middle-class, let alone as a simple peasant." He grabbed his black dress robes from over the back of a chair and with some help struggled into them. "I wish I didn't have to do this."

"It's for a good cause."

"Lining the Ministry's pockets? Pfft. I don't mind speaking at charity events, but this is just the anniversary of Voldemort's death. I'd rather hoped that I'd just be able to kill the bastard and get on with my life, but no—" He was cut off by a lingering kiss.

"You'll do fine. You always do."

Harry snorted, but there was no real malice in the sound. "I guess. At least the deal I made with Scrimgeour keeps the reporters at bay. Anyway, you're off. See you there?"

"Of course." A soft peck on the lips. "Good luck."

_.:Priorities:._

"Hermione!" Harry held his arms wide open, pulling his friend into a hug and spinning her around.

"Oh – Harry! Let me go!"

Setting Hermione on the ground, Harry pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. "You look gorgeous, love." And she did, with half of her hair pinned up leaving the rest to tumble down in glorious curls over her fitted red dress robes.

"You're not bad yourself, Harry, but with your _lover_ on hand to help you out, I'm not surprised. Tell him the silver shot through the black was a nice touch, would you?"

"You can tell him yourself, he's here tonight," Harry informed her, pulling her into another hug – albeit stationary this time.

"How many times do I have to tell you, Potter? Hands off my wife."

Harry laughed, holding his hand out to Blaise. "I'd rather have my hands on you, Zabini," he teased as they shook hands. Blaise made a show of wiping his palms on his robes, navy blue to contrast his wife's and the three of them laughed.

Harry smiled softly at Hermione's back as the three of them headed towards the ballroom. The red of her dress robes was the same as every other piece of clothing she owned, deep as blood spilled by moonlight. Harry sighed, feeling that faint pang of regret he got almost every time he saw Hermione. He was beyond the 'if only I'd done more' stage, but her residual feelings of guilt were still glaringly obvious.

Hermione wasn't a killer. She could cast a mean Stunner, was one of the best Legilimens on the planet and had helped coordinate the three pronged attack that ended the Red War but when it all boiled down, she wasn't mentally equipped to deal with the repercussions of ending a life. Harry had known that, and he still hadn't been able to stop her from slaughtering her way through eleven Death Eaters to mercy-kill Ron, who had been captured a month before.

Something had broken inside Hermione that day when she saw Ron, something that even Blaise hadn't yet managed to heal. She'd invented several new blood curses on the spot and Harry had been too busy killing Voldemort to stop her using them. It had been hours past sunset when the epic death battle finally ended and Hermione's battle robes had been totally drenched in blood.

Three years later she still wore that colour like a mantle of guilt that was almost a friend, it had been there so long.

"Harry?"

Hermione's voice jerked him out of his thoughts and back to the world of the living. "Hmm?"

"Your speech – have you prepared it?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Of course. It's right…oh, bugger."

"Oh, Harry, you _didn't_,"

"I swear, I had it right in my hand—" Which had then dropped the speech on his dressing table to run through his hair. Damn it. "Well, I guess I'll have to Apparate back and get it."

"No time, Harry." Blaise nodded at the large double doors leading to the ballroom and the heralds standing on either side, ready to open them and announce the presence of the guests of honour. "We're on."

"Oh…well, you _did_ write the speech, didn't you Harry? I'm sure you can remember the main points and impromptu from there," Hermione said brightly as they arranged themselves in front of the doors, Hermione and Blaise in front with Harry hidden behind.

Harry choked. "_Me?_ Write a speech? Of course I didn't write the damn thing, I got—"

"We're ready to begin, sir," whispered one of the heralds, a snobby looking brunette.

Harry felt the blood draining from his face. "Hermione, save me! I'm no good at impromptu, you know that! Especially not when I have to be all politically correct and suck up to the Minister."

"Sir…"

"In a god-damned minute!" Harry snapped. "C'mon Herms, there's got to be a way out of this."

She bit her lip, twisting back to face him. "I'm sorry, love, I really can't think of anything. It really does serve you right though."

"He doesn't need a lecture, 'Mione," Blaise drawled, humour evident in his voice. "If you want my input, Harry, screw the political correctness and go with your gut feeling. The election for Minister is in what, four months? If you do enough damage here, Scrimgeour won't get re-elected and you won't have to show up at anymore of these events."

"Sir, I really must protest—"

"Alright, alright, open the doors," Harry growled, patting his robes just in case he _did_ have the speech on him. No such luck.

The doors opened. Harry, still being a pitiful 5'10" could barely see the crowd over Hermione's piled up hair and Blaise's 6'2".

"Presenting our guests of honour! Mrs Hermione Granger-Zabini, Order of Merlin First Class and her husband Professor Blaise Zabini."

There was the obligatory polite applause, overshadowed somewhat by the more enthusiastic clapping of their allies among the guests. The pair glided beautifully down the stairs and through the parting crowd to end up in the 'inner circle'. The 'inner circle' was, quite literally, a circle of Auror's surrounding elevated podium at the other end of the ballroom where Rufus Scrimgeour stood, smiling benignly.

Harry was acutely aware that almost every eye in the room was resting on him. He resisted the urge to run his hand through his hair and instead pasted a sincere looking smile on his face as his name and title were called out and scanned the crowd for that one face.

He found it – him – easily, almost as if magnetically drawn. The was a sneer fixed upon those delicious lips, but Harry's gray-eyed lover looked none the worse for it. One of said gray eyes winked and Harry felt the smile brighten, become more real as he made his way down the stairs, through the crowd and Aurors to the spot in the 'inner circle' previously marked out as his during the rehearsal.

Scrimgeour held his wand to his neck and Harry was close enough to hear him mutter, "_Sonorus._" The Minister cleared his throat and instantly held the attention of everyone in the room.

"Today," he announced sombrely. "Is the third anniversary of the death of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and the ending of the Red War. It is a day of great joy, but also of great sorrow. While we may take comfort in the knowledge that our world is safe from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, I urge you to remember those who cannot. Those brave souls who gave their lives to protect the wizarding world and all it holds dear. The men and women who died for their country, died for the Light, died for _you_." He paused dramatically, every inch the politician. "I ask for a moment of silence, if you will, in remembrance."

Harry bowed his head, faces flashing though his mind – his parents, Sirius, Dumbledore, Percy, Katie Bell, Neville…

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the man who avenged them! Harry Potter!"

Harry briefly entertained the thought of AK-ing the bastard right there on the podium, but shrugged it off immediately. One didn't do that sort of thing in polite company.

"_Quietus,_" Scrimgeour muttered as he stood aside, allowing Harry to take his place in front of the podium. There was the place to put his speech – only Harry didn't have a speech so he rested a hand there instead, the other pulling out his wand and performing the _Sonorus_ charm.

"Well…this is the fifth time I've stood up to talk about that bastard's death, and I have to say although it was better the second time, it hasn't got any easier since. Killing someone isn't as easy as whipping out a wand and screaming _Avada Kedavra_." The room, barring a select few – most of which were Harry's friends – flinched. Next to Harry, Scrimgeour shifted slightly. Harry's speech wasn't going the way the Minister had planned, and he didn't like it. "It took a lot of planning, a lot of magic and many lives to bring Voldemort – oh for fuck's sake, grow _up_," he yelled as the room flinched again. Something snapped inside of him and he knew suddenly with utter clarity that he wasn't going to be invited to another one of these events, not with what he had to say.

"Voldemort is dead. _Dead!_ I killed him with my own two hands – yes, that's right. The pretty story the Ministry's been spreading since they first interrogated me is a lie. I didn't just go up to one of the most powerful wizards on earth, tap him on the shoulder and go 'Excuse me, Mr. Voldemort, but _Avada Kedavra!_' I battled him for _five hours_ until our magic was utterly depleted and then we rolled around in the blood and guts and shit like fucking _animals_. People were dying, all around us, not just for their country or the Light, or _you_, but because they had their own reason for doing so." Harry paused to draw breath. "How _dare _you assume you know what those men and women died for when half of you weren't even there!

"You didn't see me grab a hold of Voldemort's neck and hold him down and _squeeze_ and not let go until long after the light faded from the godforsaken red eyes because I wanted to make sure the bastard was dead. And let me tell you, at that moment I wasn't making sure I'd killed him right for _you_, or the wizarding world or for the god-damned Light, it was because I'm human and I didn't want him taking anything else away from me. My parents, my godfather, my mentor, my best _friend_…" He was crying now, Harry realised, tears running down his cheeks. Out of all the eyes riveted on him, he could feel that one gray pair and he knew everything was going to be all right.

"So there you have it. The true story of what happened that night three years ago. And if you want to know why I didn't disagree with the fairytale you all knew and loved, it's because it was my damn business and I have the freedom to tell the truth to whoever I bloody well choose."

He stepped off the podium with a dull thump, ending the _Sonorus_ and thrusting his way through the crowd, Hermione and Blaise following after. He felt a hand tag his arm and nearly jerked away when out of the corner of his eye he spotted the blonde hair. Almost in slow motion he turned to meet the beautiful gray eyes and then he couldn't see them anymore because he'd pulled the lithe body to him and closed his eyes and kissed the delicious lips. Attack probably would have been a better word, Harry thought dizzily as he bit the lower lip, begging for entrance and receiving permission in the form of an open mouth a tongue dancing with his.

Reluctantly he pulled back and gave the gaping crowd and odd little half wave, his partner smug on his arm.

"By the way, Draco Malfoy and I have been fucking for the last two and a half years."

_.:Priorities:._

The next morning, after a fantastic round of sex, Harry awoke to the sound of a voice yelling out his name. After taking in his surroundings and concluding that Draco was most definitely still asleep he dragged himself out of bed and stumbled into the lounge.

Hermione's head sitting like an egg in the fire. Harry blinked, remembered he was a wizard and that this was entirely normal before crouching down to greet her.

"Oh, _finally_. Do you know how long I've been sitting here? My knees are about to crumble!"

Harry scratched his head and yawned. "Why didn't you just Floo in?"

"After what happened last time? I don't _think_ so."

Harry blushed. 'Last time', Hermione had walked in to find Harry and Draco in a rather compromising position on top of the aptly named shag rug in front of the fire. "Uh…right. Anyway, what are you after?"

"Have you seen the _Daily Prophet _yet?"

Harry groaned, shoving his hair back off his face. "I'll bet they had a field day. What's the headline – _Harry Potter: Insane Again?_"

"Erm…no. Not exactly."

He frowned, standing. "What do you mean, not exactly?"

At that moment a nondescript barn owl swooped in through what Harry could have sworn was a closed window and dropped a newspaper on Harry's head. It squawked angrily and Harry swore, directing it over to a pile of loose change as he bent to pick up the _Daily Prophet._

"Harry, I really would suggest sitting down before you read it. Scrimgeour's playing dirty."

Harry ignored his friend, flicking the newspaper open. A few seconds later it hit the ground with a dull thump and was followed by Harry doing the same thing.

"I did try to warn you, love," Hermione said, rather weakly in Harry's opinion.

He stared at the picture of himself and Draco locked in the passionate kiss they'd shared at the 'party' the previous night. It wasn't the picture he minded so much as the headline.

"Harry? What's the matter?"

The raven-haired man picked up the newspaper and brandished it in Draco's direction. "I am _not_ bottoming!"

_.:Priorities:._

_Heh…this didn't turn out the way I'd planned – it was meant to be a practice smut thing for me, but I couldn't do it in the end. I'm more of a prude than I thought I was, lol. Anyway, I hope you like it!_


End file.
